Easter At Lou Anne and Danny's

Easter 2009

The cake Jera made. It came out adorable!!

Uncle Dan holding Bryce. It just melts Dan's

heart when Bryce wants to snuggle him.

Noah (check out his boots lol) Grace and Allie

Kennedy,Carter, Dylan and Trent

Allie showing me her eggs.

Carter is on the hunt.

Look at all those eggs! No wonder she won!!!

She knew where to go!!

Gracie got a couple eggs. She was so cute. She went to grab

an egg and seen a little toad hop and that was the end of picking

up that egg!!! (She's so adorable)

Bryce was on a roll with gathering eggs!!!

Once he figured it out he ran after the eggs and ran

them back to his dad to put in his basket!!

This is certainly the age when they are so fun!!

Carter showin off all the eggs he found!

Dan helping the kids count and empty their plastic eggs.

Kennedy counting her eggs and SHE WAS THE WINNER!!

She had the most eggs of all the kids. Good movin girl!

Dying Easter Eggs at Grammy and Poppy's

Every year on Good Friday we all get together at Gramy and Poppy's

to color Easter eggs.

The kids love it!!

It gets to be rather messy but it's all worth it.

This year around 5 dozen were colored.

After the eggs all dried we hid them and had an Easter egg hunt.

I do beleive that a plastic egg hunt is a much better way to go.

There were SO many broken eggs once the hunt was over!!!

Cyrah and Taylor coloring their eggs

Taylor is such a Tom GIRL! She never uses any egg utinsils.
She dips and pulls the eggs out with her fingers!
Gotta love her!!
Blake making a camoflauge egg

Look!! All hands!!

Hence the no utensils lol..

Cyrah and Taylor

When it came to finding those eggs Blake was on a mission!!!

Carter was even lucky enough to find some eggs lol

I Spy.......a gray and blue camoflauged egg!

Taylor showing off all the eggs she found

2009

Happy Birthday Fat Lip!

On Caleb's birthday he had baseball practice.

He didn't really get the gift he was hoping for :)

One of the kids hit a ball and it bounced off Caleb's mouth!

This photo is pretty mild, by the next day he had a pretty bruised mouth (inside and out)

It looked like he was trying to grow a half hitler mustache!

But after a few days the bruise went away.

We worried it would make him scared of the ball, but it didn't seem to effect him anymore!!

None the less, our baby turned 11 and is growing more and more.

Wii went bowling and didn't leave the house!

We recently bought the Nintendo Wii (in March) with the intentions of it being a "family toy". There have been many evenings where we bowled or played baseball, but I wanted to make it super fun.

So I went to Aldi's and bought all kinds of junk food that you would find at a bowling alley.

We moved stuff around in the living room and set up our own bowling alley.

For awhile Carter was kickin our butts!!!

But in the end Dan won!

We set up tv trays in the kitchen and in between breaks Carter ran our "concession stand".

He had a great time being "in charge".

Caleb also joined us for this event, but was being a stinker and wouldn't let me take any photos of him!

We had a fun cheap night at home! We plan to do this again but having a baseball night instead with hot dogs and popcorn..can you say..Take Me Out To The Ball Game!!

What? Noodles can be made a HOME ???????????

The great thing about kids is you are constantly reminded of "your days gone by".

The boys are always doing things that trigger my memory! They always remind me of how far our world has come and how quickly things change.

The other day I decided I was going to make beef and home made noodles for dinner.

Well Carter being the kitchen cook that he is, I thought I'd wait for him to come home from school to see if he might like to help.

When I asked him if he would like to help me make the noodles his response was "What? Noodles can be made at home?" I laughed and said "What do you mean?" he replied "I thought they could only come from the store" lol...It's funny how it reminded me that making noodles use to be one of my "chores" when it was my turn to cook dinner. How my mom rarely BOUGHT noodles!

And yet, store bought has become a regular staple in our home without me even realizing just how much!

So with a little flour and eggs, and a couple more eggs, due to dropped...cracked on the counter...etc...we were now ready to get our hands dirty.....

"What?? Put my hands in THAT?"

I told him "Yep! That's all a part of making noodles", while secretly thinking this was the part I always hated too lol!!

At first he did not like the feel of it...but I encouraged him to keep mixing and squishing
After a few minutes he claimed his hands were too tired, but assured me that they were just a little tired, he could still roll the dough lol.

So mix, rolled, cut and dried, we got the beef to a good boil and put them in....and I'm pleased to say they turned out, dinner was a success and Carter ate a second helping that night!!

Today I asked Dan to put a clothes line up. LOL..I laugh at what my kids will say about that! "WHAT? YOU CAN DRY CLOTHES OUTSIDE"

A walk to the pond...

Since we've had a couple nice days,

We've been trying to take family walks and

look at new things that Spring has in store for us around the farm.

In the back field we have a pond, also known as the dogs swimming hole, aka

frogs and toads galore!!

We found this year it's gotton much bigger then it was last year.

As we were walking I picked up a dried plant. I'm not positive what they are called.

Maybe milkweed?? They are dry and brittle and when you break them open it has like a white foam in them?? Well anyways, the boys thought that was pretty cool and Carter carried a stick with us the whole time, breaking it open, pulling the foam out and squishing it. What a cheap toy :)

We seen ALOT of deer tracks, but no deer this time around.

The frogs music was unbeleiviably loud!!!

By the sounds of things you would have thought there were millions of frogs

surrounding us......however...we had a hard time spotting them!!
Everyone looked and watched closely for movement...

After LOTS of searching for frogs in that murky weedy water,

who should be the first person to spy one??!! DAN!!!!

How he saw that thing is beyond me because I was STILL looking

even after he was moving the stick around lol!!

The boys patiently scanned the murky pond in hopes

of finding at least one frog or toad!

waiting...searching..looking for movement..

Caleb sees one, and reaches through the fence to grab him up

out of the water. Did he catch him??

OF COURSE!!!

Carter had to check this finding out too of

course!!! "Can we keep him?" was now the question at hand...

We explained that he still had lots of growing to do and must be

put back.

I was just thankful nobody threw it on me!!! (I hate frogs and toads!)
All in all we had a great walk!!

We didn't get back in time to start our before bed routines (it was a school night) and everyone was super late getting to bed because showers and the such had to be done....but ole well...it don't happen every day and we all had a fun time together!!

It was nice getting the kids outside, all of us letting the electronics take a rest and just enjoying the company of each other.

We know the boys are growing quickly so walks like this will soon be few and far...I hope you find some time this Spring to take in all of God's creation as new life emerges!

Thanks for reading!

One tooth down....Several to go.....

Well Carter has finally lost his first tooth!

Seems he's behind on losing them and just couldn't

stand that all his friends and couisns were losing all theirs!

His two bottom teeth were loose and one finally wiggled it's

way out when he was at school.

His teacher, who is just the neatest,

Sealed it up in a tiny envelope and sent it home.

The visit of the tooth fairy brought a buck!!

That seemed to make lil' snaggle tooth happy :)

Since then he has lost the other tooth too!!

So two down........

So how did you answer the question-

"Mom, what does the tooth fairy do with our teeth?"

For us, the tooth fairy has always taken the teeth and put them in the sky and made them into stars! How else do we get all those sparkly stars in the sky?? AND the next night when you look outside the first twinkling star is your tooth!!!

It's always worked!!!

Well except once when Caleb found the tooth that the tooth fairy had already paid him for...Of course in cases like that tho, the tooth fairy sells them back to the parents so they can be put in scrapbooks :)